
| | Fast Focus |
 |
Bidwell reaches out to younger entrepreneurs who live life
online.
|
 |
Millions of dollars are available to fund new ideas.
|
 |
An online brainstorming session generated 45,000 hits and
nearly 400 ideas.
|
Uncommon Inspiration
Chubb experiments with new forms of
innovation using brokers and agents.
By
Ed Leefeldt
As a volunteer fire captain in a small town, Jon Bidwell
puts out fires. As global innovation officer of the $13 billion
Chubb Corp., he’s trying to light a few.
In June 2008, Bidwell was summoned to Chubb’s
boardroom, where he got his new job and a mandate: Make change. Increase the speed and breadth
of new ideas, bring more products to market sooner, and create
transparency, so everyone from the CEO to the independent agent
could see what is happening at the company.
The message from the board was marked urgent. “The
future relevancy of our company depends on this,” he was
told.
This would be a radical departure for “Old Man
Chubb.” Founded in 1882 at New York harbor by Thomas
Caldecot Chubb and his son Percy to write cargo insurance,
Chubb’s annual report is punctuated with words like
“conservative” and “stable,” which are
often synonymous with “slow-moving.” Its
oak-paneled executive suite with portraits of clipper ships and
18th century landscapes is far removed from the YouTube and
Twitter world that younger people live in.
Percolate New Ideas
But Chubb knew it had to reach beyond its older executive
clientele to the emerging entrepreneurs who live life online.
As a high-end insurer, Chubb specializes in premium products
and services, so it can’t compete on a commodity basis by
undercutting the prices of others, especially direct insurers.
Instead, Chubb needed to become an “idea factory,”
where new ideas percolated up from the ranks rather than
trickling down from the top. And it needed to do it in a
hurry.
“Insurance is perceived as a slow-moving
business,” says Bidwell. “But the cost of
technology is declining and the speed of people getting into
business is increasing. You’ve got to pick up on new
ideas quickly.”
At first glance, Bidwell doesn’t look like the ideal
candidate for this job. At 47 and with graying temples,
he’s on the other side of the generation gap. He’s
also a company lifer, part of the Chubb culture since 1983,
when he started as a trainee in the unit that insures banks.
But he learned fast when smaller banks were gobbled up by
larger banks, which in turn became prey themselves in the
twilight of the Glass-Steagall era. Bidwell was forced to
“evolve or die” as he changed manager jobs, moving
from Detroit to Philadelphia to New York.
In his new job, Bidwell runs lean and mean with a staff of
only “three and a half,” hardly enough to run focus
groups, conduct surveys and roundtables, write reports to the
CEO, and wait for an answer—the “oh, no, not
another meeting!” way of getting things done. But the
seed money involved is sizeable. While Chubb isn’t
writing any blank checks, the venture capital fund Bidwell
works with has millions at its disposal to fund new ideas. As
he puts it, “up to seven figures per idea and as many as
prove out.”
In other words, he is a venture capitalist tucked into a big
insurer. Why not borrow the structure and strategies of Silicon
Valley, possibly the most successful idea factory the world has
ever seen? He focused on Google, where employees are encouraged
to spend 20% of their time being innovative.
Bidwell began by enlisting company employees, not only those
under him, but his peers and those above him. This required a
little finessing, a lot of social networking, and a good chunk
of schmoozing. He got the backing of Chubb’s information
technology department to adapt Web tools and even enlisted the
company’s speechwriter to help with internal
communications.
|